Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted defeat in battle against Google for search engine supremacy. According to a story in The Financial Times (registration required) Ballmer says Google has won the search war online. "I do fault us for the speed with which we dove into search, primarily because we didn't see the business model. And I give Google credit for innovating in the business model around search. They did a nice job on that, and that's why they won."
But Ballmer says the search engine war is far from over and not to count Microsoft out. Later in the interview Ballmer outlined some of Microsoft's future search plans. "There are some things that we just have to, as we say, ante up to be in the game: relevance, cap-ex, responsiveness. There are areas in which we?re going to differentiate and make Google play catch-up."
Google to Play Catch Up to Microsoft?
Oh really, Microsoft is going to make Google play catch-up? That's an interesting stance for Ballmer to take considering the most recent numbers released by ComScore for search engine rankings. In the month of May Microsoft?s share of the search engine market dropped 0.6 percent to 8.5 percent market share. Google enjoyed the highest market share at 61.8 percent, a small 0.2 percent increase from April. Yahoo was a distant second place with 20.6 percent market share, which like Google was a 0.2 percent increase from April.
After losing its bid for Yahoo, Microsoft has tried to downplay Yahoo's potential relevance to its playbook. To me it's obvious that Microsoft needs some help be it from Yahoo or from somewhere else.
According to ComScore even Yahoo's market share is expanding - something Microsoft can't say.
Ballmer is so annoying, it is going to take a lot of work and innovation for Microsoft to gain significant ground in the search engine war.
http://thegooglehouse.blogspot.com